Monday, August 6, 2012

New logos: MTVA

The Media Support and Asset Management Fund (known in Hungarian as Médiaszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezelő Alap, abbreviated MTVA) is Hungary's public media organisation, formed last year through the merger of the two television broadcasters MTV and Duna TV, the radio company Magyar Rádió and the news agency MTI. In an effort to bring the organisation together, a new corporate identity was launched on July 27 for the start of the Olympics. It includes new logos for seven radio networks and four TV channels.

The new logo system really stands out among its peers for its minimalist simplicity. It relies on a circle as a unifying element with a few lines and circles to represent the different services. MTVA credits the new logos to an in-house team lead by a designer named Vida Zoltán, which took inspiration from the four classical elements.

The logos have also been turned into large physical models that appear in idents filmed around the Hungarian countryside. These models also appear in promos for the broadcaster.

The logos for the original TV broadcaster MTV use vertical lines, one red line for the primary channel (M1) and two green for the second channel (M2). The second TV broadcaster, Duna TV, named after the Danube, uses wavy blue lines. The radio networks use horizontal lines in different colours and probably some built in symbolism.
Hungarian radio has an interesting practise where its three primary networks are named after famous Hungarians, for example the classical music networks is called Bartók Rádió after Béla Bartók. Previously, they have also been numbered from 1-7, but it seems those numbers have been deprecated with this redesign.

The new logos launched on July 27, and were unveiled at a press conference in Budapest on July 24.